Day 662: Visiting the Rocky Mountain Airshow

This morning we said goodbye to the O family in Denver, where we’ve been parked since Shavuos.  It’s been a lot of fun catching up, as we haven’t been here since 2011:

Day662_02

  The kids will miss the family dog, Radar:

Day662_01

Day662_04

It was a tight fit getting out of the driveway:

Day662_03

We drove east to the Snowflake PPG flying site, where we stayed a few nights before Shavuos.  We dropped off the RV and drove just a few miles down the road to the Rocky Mountain Airshow.  The first performance was by local PPG pilots Nathan and Chris:

Day662_05

Day662_06

Several vintage warbirds flew by, including this NA-50:

Day662_07

And this T-6:

Day662_08

Day662_09

Day662_10

Doug Jardine, flying his Sbach 342:

Day662_11

Day662_12

Matt Younkin, performing impressive maneuvers in his Twin Beech passenger plane:

Day662_13

Day662_14

The Air Force Honor Guard did a demonstration:

Day662_15

The highlight of the snow was the USAF Thunderbirds, flying the F-16 Falcon:

Day662_16

Day662_17

Day662_18

Day662_19

Day662_20

Day662_21

Day662_22

The Calypso maneuver:

Day662_23

Day662_24

Day662_25

Day662_26

Day662_27

Day662_28

Day662_29

Crossover Break maneuver:

Day662_30

Day662_31

Day662_32

Day662_33

Day662_34

Day662_35

Day662_36

Day662_37

Day662_38

Day662_39

Delta Wing formation:

Day662_40

Delta Burst maneuver:

Day662_41

Day662_43

Bomb Burst maneuver:

Day662_44

At the bottom of the Bomb Burst, all four planes cross each other’s paths at 90 degree angles:

Day662_45

Day662_46

 

Day662_48

Day662_49

The afternoon program had Bob Carlton flying his Subsonix:

Day662_50

We saw several flybys by this World War II era B-25 Mitchell.  Named “Maid in the Shade”, it is one of only a few dozen still flying:

Day662_51

Day662_52

Flyby with bomb bay doors open:

Day662_55

Beech Staggerwing:

Day662_54

The last performer we saw was Don Nelson flying his Sukhoi 26:

Day662_56

Day662_57

Day662_58

Traffic in and out of the airshow was considerable, but it was worth the wait.  We’ve been trying to get the kids to an airshow since the beginning of the trip, so I’m glad we were finally able to do it.

Day 659: Skate Park and Gap Filling Foam

Today we visited a local skate park.  M received some great scootering tips from another boy at the park:

Day659_01

While the kids and Trish were doing homeschool, I was finishing up mouse-proofing the RV.  There’s no way to seal up the basement level, as the slides actuate into and out of the basement, so those holes can’t be plugged up.  What I’m trying to do is isolate the basement level from the living level in the RV.  This mostly involved filling gaps around water and sewer lines that come up from the basement behind cabinets.  In some cases, the holes were much larger than they needed to be:

Day659_03

The vent pipe went through a huge hole in the wall behind the kitchen cabinets, so I cut out a large piece of scrap wood, glued it to the wall, and filled in the remaining gaps with foam:

Day659_02

We will see what happens, hopefully the mice will get bored and leave instead of hanging out in the walls now that we’ve locked them out of our house.

Endomondo Embeds Broken, Hopefully only Temporarily

628x471

I use Endomondo to display all the routes for hiking, cycling, and PPG flights.  Unfortunately, about a week ago, Endomondo broke their embed functionality, so posts with embedded routes will temporarily have a large whitespace where the route should be displayed.  Endomondo says they’re working on the problem.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Day 658: Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR, NCAR, and Celestial Seasonings

Today we visited Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR, which was an Army chemical weapons depot turned superfund site.  The refuge video presentation and visitor center were well done:

Day658_01

Day658_02

Sadly, there’s no Junior Ranger program here.  We drove the nature drive in the refuge, and spotted several bird species and a pair of bison.

Continuing north to Boulder, we visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research.  NCAR is a private-sector non-profit funded almost exclusively by tax dollars via the National Science Foundation:

Day658_03

We attended the noontime tour which was a summary of the various exhibit spaces in the building.  After that, we explored the exhibits on our own, which included an exhibit that allows visitors to pass their hand through a “cloud”:

Day658_04

In the basement, we looked at the old supercomputer used for weather simulations.  The new system is too large for this facility, and is located in Wyoming:

Day658_05

Another exhibit talked about the architectural design process for the facility:

Day658_06

Day658_07

The other exhibits talked about how the atmosphere and climate work, including the interaction between the Sun and the Earth’s atmosphere:

Day658_08

Day658_09

Day658_10

Day658_11

Our last stop for the day was the factory tour at Celestial Seasonings, the largest boutique tea company in the US.  We saw the milling room where the ingredients are ground up, as well as the packaging line from carton assembly to robotic arms that stack filled cartons on pallets.  We also visited the sinus-opening peppermint room, where milled peppermint is stacked floor to ceiling, ready to be used as an ingredient in several flavors of tea.

No photography was allowed inside, so you won’t get to see photos of us in hair nets (and a beard net for me!).  Here’s the outside of the building:

Day658_12

The kids have started loading up their new Junior Ranger wall hangings:

Day658_13